ISSUE #5

Hold

Maud Bryt, "Yesterday" 2020, watercolor on paper, 11x15 inches. The editors would like to thank Maud for permission to share her work in issue 5. The editors would also like to thank Garth Evans for curating art for Speculative Nonfiction and introducing us to so many wonderful artists.

Table of Contents

Editor’s Notes

Even A Hollow Object Will Displace Water and Air / Jenny Apostol

What holds the body together?

Hand of Smoke / Lesley Wheeler

In our eleventh year, Danya Brown and I are scholars of extrasensory power.

Irôko / Faith Adiele

He says: You don't know anything about Nigeria. I say: You don't know anything about me.

In the Garden / Lucy Schiller

I began to eat entire loaves of bread for dinner and nap in the thickness of the wild grass atop the cliff, where no one could see me.

Marrow / Bryn Grey

All of C. is here: shards of bone, nubs of his impeccable teeth (dad’s a dentist).

Rubber Trees Will Grow Again / Chengru He

when they sang in the evening, the company commander would knock on the bamboo door, xiaogui, what’re you singing?

Giddy Up, Horse Boy / Lulu Dewey

Worse than the horses themselves must be the horse people, who are everywhere, at every turn, inescapable: buying horse biscuits at the pet store or discussing dressage over dinner.

Paternity / David Shields

Do you have a philosophy of fatherhood?

Hold Your Body / Aekta Khubchandani

A white man cradles a cat like a baby.

Crows Rearrange Themselves on Branches / Stephanie Sauer

I veer left again, notice the same busted mirror. Blood rushes to my palms.

North Pole / Ilana Bean

The more I read about the North Pole, the less I feel like it even exists.